Storage questions....

[casil403]

I am looking for some advice on storage. I have a 500G ex hard drive which I store photos on. I am worried about filling up the computers memory with photos and slowing it down. Right now I have the same photos stored on both the computer and on the hard drive.

Can I move the lightroom program to this hard drive also? If so how? How do I remove the photos from the computer instead of just copying them to the hard drive?

I'm not sure what I should do to keep space open on my computer...any suggestions on what I should be doing would be helpful...please remember I am technically challenged here so please write in basic layman's terms....

[Wicked Dark]

Lightroom doesn't care where the photos are stored. I put mine on the external drive all the time. All Lr does is reference the files, it doesn't need to be in the same place as the files. With the drive disconnected you can still catalog, keyword and do some Metadata stuff I think, but you won't be able to edit them. Once the drive is reattached, you can manipulate the files again. make sense?

[F8&Bthere]

Ditto what WD said.

FWIW- for some reason I don't like to always have to fire up my external drive. My local internal drive is a decent size and dedicated to multimedia, so what I do is I have two Lightroom master folders, one on my internal C: drive called Current Work, which is usually the last few months of images, and one on my external called Archives, which is everything else. That way I can fire up LR and work on current stuff quickly without "bothering" the external drive. And as WD says all the images stored on your external drive are still in your LR catalog to look at previews, sort into collections, etc, you just can't edit them or view in full resolution unless you turn on the external drive. But as soon as you do turn it on, LR automatically re-links so you can have full functionality.

You probably already know this, but it's important that if you end up moving files around from drive to drive or creating new folders and such that you do it within the LR Library interface, not windows explorer (I guess same thing applies to Mac). It can save some headaches. Just remember that as of LR 2.x you can't move more than one folder at a time within that LR Library module. you can select-all or shift-click individual files, but doesn't work with folders. I found out the hard way when I decided to re-organize a library of thousands of images that were sorted into 100+ folders, each one a day of shooting.

Better to research a bit how others are structuring their libraries, plugins, catalogs, backups, etc, getting some different ideas and logic, deciding what works for you, then doing it right in the first place and sticking to it. I still don't think I have it right.

[casil403]

So is it okay to delete all the photos stored in my pictures then if they are also stored on the hard drive? Or should I keep some from say the last couple months on the computer in case I want the option of working on them?
Thanks for your advice...workflow is definitely not a strength (just one of many non-strengths,,,lol)..like so many things...I guess it's yet another thing I have to start learning!

[Iguanasan]

Not sure how Lightroom works but if it's like Picasa and it's non-destructive you may lose your edits if you move them from one location to another outside of Lightroom. So, check Lightroom to see if there is a Move function for a folder and move it to a new physical location within the Lightroom software.

With Picasa I have my most recent stuff on my local drive and my older stuff on a mapped drive it's a 1TB external drive attached to another computer in my house. While roaming around in Picasa I don't even notice it switch between the drives. That helps free up space on my local computer but still lets me access all of my images.

[F8&Bthere]

So is it okay to delete all the photos stored in my pictures then if they are also stored on the hard drive? Or should I keep some from say the last couple months on the computer in case I want the option of working on them?

Well, if I am understanding your question correctly...
When you initially set up Lightroom you likely chose a master folder location to store your images in. It sounds like that location was a folder somewhere on your 500G external drive. So then I guess every time you import new images, you have LR set to move them from the memory card (if you do it the way I do) to that folder and add them to the LR catalog (database). Any further manipulation of the images and subfolders in that folder on your external hard drive should only be done from within LR. Don't delete, move, or add images directly to the folder through windows explorer, or you'll make the LR gods very unhappy.

But if you also had copies of those same images in another folder for some reason (not sure how or why) like your My Pictures folder on your internal C: drive, well I'm thinking those would be redundant duplicates. There's many ways to confirm this before actually deleting anything, and I'm sure you'll know at least one.

And the bit about keeping last couple months of work on your internal drive is only the way I chose to do it, but I doubt it's the popular method. You can just keep everything on your external to keep it simple. My reasoning for doing it my way is probably not even 100% sound, but it involved slower responsiveness through USB during editing and a philosophy that the more I use the external the sooner it will die, and it's mainly the more recent images that I am playing with every day. As they say, your mileage may vary.

[casil403]

I found that I had duplicates both in the computer and in the external while in Banff... I was able to go through all my photos in my pictures in the computer after leaving the hard drive at home.
I thought I'd moved the whole lot to the HD but I guess I only copied everything.

[casil403]

Well, if I am understanding your question correctly...
When you initially set up Lightroom you likely chose a master folder location to store your images in. It sounds like that location was a folder somewhere on your 500G external drive. So then I guess every time you import new images, you have LR set to move them from the memory card (if you do it the way I do) to that folder and add them to the LR catalog (database). Any further manipulation of the images and subfolders in that folder on your external hard drive should only be done from within LR. Don't delete, move, or add images directly to the folder through windows explorer, or you'll make the LR gods very unhappy.

.

I've been importing photos via Windows import tool...should i be using Lightroom instead? That might be why they are ending up in the My pictures folder on the internal HD?
Should I be using LR to import instead of Win?
Sorry if sounds daft but I am really not good at this sort of thing.

[Greg_Nuspel]

Copy my photos of the card into a folder on one of my internal drives. I then import the photos into lightroom without moving or copying them. This way it just adds them to the database in the catalogue. I then back up my files onto an external drive using EZBackup. These are my safety files that I keep in case of a hard drive failure. I actually have two external drives one is kept at work and each week I bring the one from home to work and exchange them. This way I actually have 3 copies of my images for peace of mind.

[mbrager]

I agree with Greg: redundancy is good. The thought of losing all those beautiful photos you've taken would break our hearts. We should all make sure we back-up regularly. An external hard drive is good, but off site back up is priceless. I speak from the experience of having a hard drive failure that was unrecoverable and losing two years of work.
Mike